Scenarios are not MMO

Warning: This is an opinionated, biased rant. 🙂

Jobildo’s post got some excellent comments and in turn got me to thinking about scenarios and why I resist them as much as I do.

And the answer, it turns out, is pretty simple: I’m not paying $15/month to play Team Fortress with some RPG trappings. I’m paying to play a Massively Multiplayer game with a persistent world. Call of Duty 4 allows me to play missions over and over on the same handful of maps while leveling up a character and guess what? It doesn’t cost me a penny once I’ve bought the game.

For people who sit in a warcamp and grind scenarios, there is really no need for a persistent world. A lobby would do just as well, wouldn’t it? A lobby would require vastly fewer server resources and would’ve cost orders of magnitude less to develop.

Essentially, this is battle.net.

It feels stupid for me to pay a monthly fee to, in part, support the infrastructure for a world that no one wants to use.

And I’m kind of dubious that after ranking through 40 levels in scenarios, people are suddenly going to go into OpenRvR (erm, that assumes that T4 scenarios exist…I honestly am not sure if they do)! More likely they’ll either leave the game or keep grinding scenarios until they hit 80 renown, and then leave.

What I’d like to see is all the scenario grinders funneled off to one server, and all the OpenRvRers gathered together into another server. The grinders shouldn’t have to pay $15/month to play, either, but that’s a side point. The OpenRvR Server shouldn’t even offer scenarios.

What irks me is that, yeah, it’s hard to find OpenRvR even on high population servers. Why? Because everyone is grinding scenarios while commenting that OpenRvR isn’t fun because no one does it. Curiously, I wonder if there isn’t MORE OpenRvR on less populated servers with longer wait times for scenario queues. I plan to find out.

I understand people want to get to cap as fast as they can. That’s why the gold sellers also offer leveling services. Grinding scenarios isn’t the fastest and easiest way to cap: paying someone to level your character is. But I don’t see anyone openly suggesting this is the best way to go about it. Why not? If all that matters is getting to 40 as fast as possible, why not just buy your way there?

If you really enjoy running scenarios, then this rant isn’t really directed at you. Enjoy the game, though why you pay a monthly fee to do in this game what you could do for free in any of a multitude of others is beyond me.

But I’m seeing people expressing opinions along the lines of “I don’t really like standing around grinding scenarios but there’s nothing else to do.” Well you sir/madame, are part of the problem. Get out of the damned queue and get out and start exploring the world! Yeah, it might be quiet at first, but if people on both sides of the battle just opted to not grind scenarios for one night and head to the RvR Lakes, there’d be *plenty* to do!!

OK, end rant.

Whew, I feel better getting that off my chest.

And Mythic, for the love of all that is holy, stop sticking us in a friggin’ scenario queue every damned time we move into an RvR Lake. You’re just fanning the flames doing that, tempting people to leave!!!

OK now I’m REALLY done this time.

Improving OpenRvR in Warhammer

Jobildo has a great post up outlining some ideas to make OpenRvR in Warhammer more appealing than it is now. It is (unsurprisingly) a well thought-out post and you should go read it if you haven’t already.

I was honestly a bit shocked when I learned how much exp you can get from playing a scenario mini-game. Now I understand why everyone does them over and over until they start talking about the boredom of grinding scenarios.

Note to Mythic: When players start putting the word “grinding” ahead of one aspect of your game, it’s time for you to pay attention. For many (not all) players, Grinding isn’t an affectionate term.

Note to Players: We’ve seen evidence that Mythic listens and responds to player feedback. So don’t get discouraged! As Moltke said, keenly anticipating the age of the MMORPG, No battle plan survives contact with the enemy and WAR is a matter of expedients. I’m pretty sure Mythic’s battle plan didn’t anticipate people ignoring 3/4ths of the world in order to sit in a scenario queue all night, and that they’ll continue to refine the game until players are enjoying all aspects of it. Mythic’s method seems to be to slowly add bonuses rather than to go overboard and then have to nerf. Smart fellas.

What can we do? Provide feedback to Mythic, either on forums or in blog posts. Link to good posts like Jobildo’s to get it more attention. Make some noise and let Mythic know we want to be able to progress at a reasonable pace via OpenRvR!

It will come in time. WAR is Everywhere and Everwhen. It isn’t going anywhere; at least not anytime soon.